Ciudad de Panama deserves its title “Crossroads of the World” due to the
fact that a great number of people cross by here towards some other place and the same number or even more stay in the City for leisure or business purposes.

The City has a population of about 700.000 inhabitants and after the Americans handed the Canal
Zone back to the Panamanians the City has experienced a “boom” in tourism as well as in investment of all sorts and in the construction field. There is construction everywhere around the City but there still are poor areas and slums. We even met
a policeman who helped us out with directions who was in Rio to learn about the relationship between what we call in Brazil the “Pacifier Police” and the slum dwellers and drug trafficking cartels in Rio.

Panama City has been on the move,
geographically as well as figuratively for the past 300 years. The original Isthmian headquarters of Balboa and the Spanish was Acla on the Atlantic Coast near the San Blas island of Mulaputo. The first Governor sent from Spain, Pedro Arias D’Avila
paused only to behead Balboa before relocating the miniature colony to the Pacific Coast, where he founded in 1519 the town which nowadays is called “Panama la Vieja”, where one can still find the ruins of the old town. There the town
grew and prospered until it was attacked by the English pirate Sir Henry Morgan, in 1671. Right after Morgan’s men attack and the fire which followed, the Spanish decided to move the town once more to a more defensible peninsula, all of this
in 1673. And this is where is located what they call “Casco Viejo”, or the old town.

At Casco Viejo, which is still being remodeled with government aid, one can visit historic buildings as: Catedral Metropolitana (headquarters of the Archdiocese
of Panama); Iglesia Nossa Senhora de La Merced(ecclesiastic museum of the City where there is an image of the Virgen de la Merced gifted by Carlos 5th and brought from Spain in 1722; Iglesia San Jose o Altar de Oro; Museo del Canal Intraoceanico
(relives the origins of the construction of the Canal of Panama); Convent of Santo Domingo or Arco Chato( the original arch was built by the Dominican friars in 1678); Las Bovedas (arches supported by columns) in the Plaza de Francia; Teatro Nacional
(designed by Italian architect Genaro Ruggery); Palacio Bolivar (in the middle of the square there is a monument in honor of the libertador Simon Bolivar; Palacio de las Garcas (is the governmental office and house of the President); Mercado del Marisco.

The growth of the City was restricted to a narrow strip between the coast and the border of the US administered Canal Zone – which had bases and headquarters for the American people which now are abandoned – some buildings are being restored
but most of them still are the way the Americans left them when the left. Since the Canal Zone was handed back to Panama, in 1999, the City has been experiencing an amazing growth and development; suburbs and shopping malls have spread rapidly; the construction
of luxury condos and a number of huge skyscrapers have changed the City’s skylight…they even have changed a coastal part of the City from water into plazas and nice gardens using the soil from the digging of the Canal improvement area which changed
the landscape of the area. Besides the tall and modern buildings there is one in the shape of a corkscrew called “Tornillo”.

Also very impressive are the Ports and the Canal zone where one can visit the Miraflores locks, where the Visitor
Center has 4 floors and has a restaurant, exhibition room, museum, gift shop, and bilingual guides who tell the History of the building and operations of the Panama Canal.